First Impressions
Heroes Remember
First Impressions
Landed at Liverpool, and went from Liverpool to London, and from
London to Salisbury, to a place called Old Sarum, which was
a permanent RAF base. We didn't, you asked me my impressions,
we didn't get there until, oh it was fairly late at night, eleven
o'clock or midnight. It was in the blackout of course,
things were pitch black, we rushed into the mess hall, we hadn't
eaten. We were given cocoa that was watered down, I don't
know how many times, bread, white margarine, that you could
hardly cut it was so hard and jam, it was just a little meal.
And so that was a bit of a shocker. But then they said,
"Okay, everybody out to the barracks." Went to the barracks,
and were handed a sack-looking thing, it was really a mattress
cover. And said, "There's straw there, you stuff your own
mattress." We literally made our own mattresses out of the straw.
The beds were some that were used in the penitentiaries,
there were slat springs, you know wide slat steel. So there we
were with a stuffed straw mattress, that on the . . .
and I thought, "Welcome to the real world of, of war."
But it was a, it was a good experience, because it made you
realize, that even with that, we were lucky to be where we were,
in England, and on that particular base.
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